DOMESTIC PRODUCTION 13 



analyzed similar costs in such a cannery as that of 

 the Campbell Soup Company, that a saving should be 

 shown was astonishing. How was it possible, I kept 

 asking myself, for a woman, working all alone, to 

 produce canned goods at a lower cost than could the 

 Campbell Soup Company with its fine division of 

 labor, its efficient management, its labor-saving ma- 

 chinery, its quantity buying, its mass-production 

 economies? Unless there was some mistake in our cal- 

 culations this experiment knocked all the elaborate 

 theories framed by economists to explain the indus- 

 trial revolution, into a cocked hat. Unless we had 

 failed to take some element of which I was ignorant 

 into consideration, the economic activities of man- 

 kind for nearly two hundred years had been based 

 upon a theory as false as its maritime activities prior 

 to the discovery of the fact that the world was round. 

 Slowly I evolved an explanation of the paradox. 

 First I sought for it in advertising. I wrote a whole 

 book, National Advertising vs. Prosperity, about my 

 excursions into, the much-neglected field of advertis- 

 ing economics. Advertising, however, furnished only 

 a partial answer to the question. While I did come to 

 the conclusion that certain kinds of advertising in- 

 volved economic wastes, I discovered that the bulk 

 of advertising had no more effect upon prices than 

 any other activities incidental to the creation of time 

 and place utilities. Articles discussing my analysis of 

 the economics of advertising were published in the 



